RAMALLAH, Nov. 25 (JMCC) - Hamas' Ahmad Yousef objects to what he calls a Western campaign to paint the movement as Islamic radicals seeking to transform Gazan society. He indicates that some mistakes have been made by well-meaning individuals, and that Hamas has intervened to correct them.

Palestinian society is inherently a conservative society, where the values that govern people's lives are mostly pure Islamic. The proper way to correct the kind of public behavior can be threaten those values should be addressed through the existing educational frameworks of the family and the mosque.

Unfortunately the combination of the Israeli misinformation campaign and to the misguided actions of a few overzealous individuals who see themselves as the guardians of public morality provides the Western media with the kind of stories that feed the common stereotypes they have of Islamists. Hamas is portrayed as being a fundamentalist and extremist movement that intends to launch an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip!